Malaysia Widens Plane Search as Debris Found Off Vietnam

A girl stands next to a sign made and written by the public as Malaysian Airline System Bhd. (MAS) aircraft sits on the tarmac at Kuala Lumpur International Airport in Sepang, Malaysia on March 10, 2014. Photographer: Daniel Chan/AP Photo

March 11 (Bloomberg) -- Malaysia widened the search area
for a missing jetliner, dispatching ships to check debris in the
South China Sea, as the hunt for clues spread to space with
satellite surveillance in a mystery entering its fourth day.

Vietnam’s coastal waters will be a target for patrol planes
today after some objects were spotted on the surface. That moved
the inquiry east of the route of Malaysian Airline System Bhd.’s
Flight 370 after focusing on the Gulf of Thailand, where an oil
slick once seen as a crash marker proved to be marine fuel.

Earth orbit offers the latest vantage point from which to
seek the Boeing Co. 777-200. A Vietnamese satellite will
photograph the Tho Chu Island area in the Gulf of Thailand, the
news website Infonet said, while China’s Xinhua news agency
reported that the country also is deploying satellites. The
probe into two fliers using stolen passports continued.

“Where you have an airplane go down in the water, it’s not
unusual to have a period where you are searching and don’t know
where it is yet,” said John Hansman, a professor of aeronautics
and astronautics at Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
“Everybody wants to have an answer right away. It takes a while
to find the evidence.”

Australia and the U.S. are part of a nine-nation, air-sea
search for the twin-aisle jet, which was en route to Beijing
from Kuala Lumpur with 239 people when it vanished from radar
screens on March 8.

Awaiting Daylight

Surface vessels kept searching overnight, and aircraft will
rejoin the probe today “as soon as the sun comes out,” Doan
Huu Gia, chief commander of the country’s aviation search and
rescue coordination center, said yesterday at a briefing in
Hanoi.

The possible debris area is 60 kilometers (37 miles)
southeast of the Vietnamese coastal city of Vung Tau, said Lai
Xuan Thanh, chief of the country’s civil aviation agency.
Vietnam is also sending ships to investigate what appears to be
metal pieces.

A plane alerted Hong Kong air traffic controllers about the
discovery, the Civil Aviation Authority of Vietnam said in a
statement on its website. Malaysian officials said they were
directing ships toward the Hong Kong region, and Vietnam said
the multinational search flotilla totaled 40 vessels, backed by
34 aircraft.

The latest sighting came as the search for Flight 370 left
authorities confounded as to how a jet with one of the
industry’s best safety records could vanish from radar without a
distress call and leave no trace over water or land, even after
days of patrols by surface vessels, planes and helicopters.

Watery Search

“This was a relatively long flight going over large areas
of water,” MIT’s Hansman said by telephone. “So there’s a
reasonably large area that has to be searched to find something.
I’m convinced something will turn up in the next few days.”

Closed-circuit television footage of the two travelers with
stolen passports gave investigators another set of clues to
examine. Austria and Italy said the passports were stolen from
their nationals. The Royal Thai Police is probing the two
thefts, which occurred in Phuket in 2012 and last year,
spokesman Piya Uthayo said in Bangkok.

“We are trying to ascertain if the two holders of false
passport entered Malaysia, legally or illegally,” Inspector-General of Police Khalid Abu Bakar said in a mobile-phone text
message. The Financial Times reported that Malaysian authorities
have given U.S. investigators biometric details on the travelers
with the stolen passports.

Ticket Numbers

Tickets purchased with the pilfered passports on the
flight, which belonged to Luigi Maraldi of Italy and Christian
Kozel of Austria, had consecutive numbers, according to the
Chinese e-ticket verification system Travelsky.

Men using the passports purchased the tickets on March 6
from Six Star Travel Co. in Pattaya, Thailand, city police
Commander Supachai Phuykaeokam said by phone. The person with
Maraldi’s documents had a final destination of Copenhagen, while
Frankurt was listed as the last stop for the person posing as
Kozel, the commander said.

An officer at Six Star Travel declined to comment. The
Financial Times cited a travel agent as saying she was asked to
arrange the trips for the two men by an Iranian contact. Neither
Maraldi nor Kozel was on the Malaysian aircraft, their
governments said.

Evidence that typically might be spotted after a terrorist
incident is lacking so far, said two U.S. officials. At the same
time, the absence of clues isn’t enough to rule out such an
attack, said the officials, who asked not to be identified while
discussing intelligence activities.

No Anomalies

The early warning system for the North American Air Defense
Command detected no anomalies related to Flight 370, said one of
the officials. Norad’s infrared and visual imagery can pick up
heat sources such as explosions and missile launches, the
official said.

U.S. intelligence agencies also haven’t turned up a burst
of chatter online or on the airwaves of the type that often
follows an attack, the second official said.

Before takeoff from Kuala Lumpur, Malaysian Airline removed
the baggage of five passengers who didn’t board after checking
in, said Azharuddin Abdul Rahman, director general of Malaysia’s
Department of Civil Aviation. “There are issues about the
passengers that did not fly on the aircraft,” he said without
elaborating.

China Passengers

Chinese travelers accounted for the largest group aboard
Flight 370, with 153 people, and that country’s government
prodded the carrier to hasten the inquiry. Also aboard were
three U.S. citizens, according to the U.S. State Department. The
U.S. Navy sent two destroyers and aircraft into the region,
according to the Defense Department.

Flight 370 departed Kuala Lumpur at about 12:41 a.m. local
time March 8 and was scheduled to land in Beijing at 6:30 a.m.
Security screening was performed as usual, Malaysia Airports
Holdings Bhd. said. Controllers lost radar contact about an hour
into the flight as the plane neared Vietnamese airspace.

The aircraft, which disappeared without providing any
distress signal, may have made an “air turn-back,” said
Malaysian Acting Transport Minister Hishammuddin Hussein. That
means the plane may have deviated from its planned route, said
Malaysian Air Chief Executive Officer Ahmad Jauhari Yahya.

Finding the jet’s flight-data and cockpit-voice recorders,
the units known collectively as an aircraft’s black box, would
help investigators unravel what happened in the final moments of
Flight 370.

Honeywell’s Equipment

Honeywell International Inc. manufactures the 777’s
recorders and the so-called emergency locator transmitter, a
separate beacon that sends a homing signal in the event of a
sharp impact such as a crash. The black-box unit emits a ping
when underwater, where the ELT won’t work.

Steve Brecken, a Honeywell spokesman, declined to comment
beyond a company statement expressing sympathy for relatives and
loved ones of Flight 370’s passengers and crew.

A team from the U.S. National Transportation Safety Board
is in Malaysia, joined by specialists from the Federal Aviation
Administration and Boeing.

While Muslim-majority Malaysia hasn’t seen any recent major
terrorist attacks on home soil, it has been used as a transit
and planning hub, according to a 2012 report by the U.S. State
Department. China has occasionally been the target of what it
calls terrorist attacks by Uighurs, a mainly Muslim ethnic group
from the nation’s northwest Xinjiang region.

Malaysia Airline said it dispatched more than 150 “Go
Team” members, consisting of senior managers and caregivers, to
Beijing to attend to passengers’ families. The stock fell 4
percent to 24 sen in Kuala Lumpur. Allianz SE, Europe’s biggest
insurer, said it provides liability coverage to the airline.